The department of nursing and the College of Life Science and Technology have moved into the recently completed Betsy Cheramie Ayo Hall.Dr. Grace Gueydan, dean of the College of Life Science and Technology, and Dr. Velma Sue Westbrook, department head of the nursing department have recently relocated into their new offices.

“The new building is beautiful and very comfortable,” Gueydan said.

Westbrook says because of the new building, the nursing students will now have excellent facilities.

“The most beneficial thing for the students is that for the first time we will have all of this additional space we can utilize. It allows for additional laboratory space and storage space,” Westbrook said.

Gueydan said the moving process was quite involved but ran smoothly due to the cooperation of the staff.

“It’s just like moving in every other case. It’s packing boxes and moving various things. However, it was done very systematically and was very organized. Our maintenance people were very consistent,” Gueydan said.

The building was originally scheduled to open at the beginning of last semester, but was delayed due to construction problems.

Dr. John Lajaunie, director of facility planning, said classes in the building were held off for this summer in order to avoid confusion.

“We held off until the end of the term so as to minimize the disruption to classes and the faculty,” Lajaunie said.

However, due to the flooding earlier this summer, the rooms in Betsy Cheramie Ayo Hall had to be utilized for classes usually held in Gouaux and Peltier Halls.

“We were forced to use the classrooms in the building this summer when we had the flooding, because that building did not take water and Gouaux and Peltier both had flooding problems,” Lajaunie said.

Because the nursing department has moved into the new building, it has allowed the John Folse Culinary Institute to move as well.

“We have been able to move culinary arts from Beauregard to Gouaux Hall, to be closer to their classroom laboratories,” Lajaunie said.

The flooding problems also complicated matters in this case as well.

“That took a little of a setback with the flood. Maintenance has been just swamped trying to clean up and catch up with the things they had to do as the result of the flooding,” Lajaunie said.